1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to certain new and useful improvements in telecopier transmission and more particularly, to an improved, reusable telecopier cover letter.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, telecopiers, or so called "fax" machines, have become widely used as an instant delivery of written communications. This is particularly true in business offices where telecopiers have become one of the customary pieces of office equipment and are frequently used for transmitting messages.
The sender of a telecommunication or fax will frequently, if not always, use a transmittal cover letter to apprise the receive of the identification of the sender. These cover or transmittal letters, or so called "fax cover sheets", may often contain other types of information informing the receiver of the nature of the communication being transmitted, such as the number of pages, the date of the transmission, time of the transmission, etc. In most cases, this cover letter is usually discarded after receipt of the transmission, since it often times is not needed and the receiver only retains the actual communication. Furthermore, the sender has essentially no need for the transmittal or cover letter and as a result, the cover letter is usually discarded by the sender.
The sender may also opt to send the original or so-called "hard copy" of this telecommunication through the mails to the receiver of the faxed transmission. In this event, inclusion of the fax cover sheet is neither necessary nor appropriate and is not usually included with the mailed conforming copy.
As a result of the foregoing, it can be observed that in essentially every telecommunication, at least one sheet of paper is used for transmission and thereafter discarded. After a period of time, the cost of this discarded cover sheet can become quite substantial, not to mention the actual cost in terms of destroyed natural resources to obtain that cover sheet. As a result, there has been a need for some type of reusable fax cover sheet.
One type of reusable fax cover sheet is illustrated and described in PCT International Application No. PCT/GB89/01093 and published under International Publication No. WO 90/03277, dated Apr. 5, 1990. This transmittal cover sheet was comprised of a plurality of separable plies or sheets, including an opaque backing and a plurality of transparent plastic sheets secured to the opaque backing along an upper margin thereof and overlaying the opaque backing. A fax sender's identification was adapted for application to one of the plies or sheets and erasable messages were to be provided on the other of the plies. However, the reusable cover sheet, as taught in this PCT application, was not practicable since it included a large number of overlying sheets and which could readily interfere with transmission through many conventional telecopier machines. In addition, this cover sheet arrangement was also quite expensive to manufacture and hence, was often costly for use as a reusable cover sheet.
The prior art is also replete with numerous embodiments of transparent sheets having information recorded thereon and which is easily removable therefrom. Exemplary of such publications are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4, 973,254, 4,250,640, 5,006,046, 4,757,901, 4,789,124, 4,456,286, 5,024,332, 4,552,382, 3,099,268.
In each of the aforesaid U.S. patents which are representative of transparent plastic sheets having information recordable thereon, there is no device which is effective as a reusable fax cover letter. In particular, there is no cover sheet having means for incorporating pre-printed sender identification and readily removing that identification to enable use by another sender.